When The Hurts Run Deep

Does your grief or disappointment seem overwhelming? At some point in life, every one of us will face the dark pain of heartache and despair, a hurt that pierces so deep we're left gasping with questions:

•Why me? Why now?
•What have I done to deserve this?
•Will the pain ever go away?
•How can God just stand by and let this happen?
•What do I have left to hope for?

Writing from insights she has gained, not only through her own valleys of deep hurt but also from years of study and counseling others through their pain, Kay Arthur points the way toward genuine healing. With candor, grace, and vulnerability, she invites you to join her on a journey toward wholeness as you exchange your fears and frustrations, hurts and disappointments for a hope that will never disappoint." Learn powerful principles to guide you to the light of redemption and hope.

Kay Arthur has been a long time favorite author, speaker, Bible study leader of mine. We cannot go through life without experiencing some kind of hurt, some desperate moments. I've had my share and am in the midst of a deep hurt. When I saw this latest title, I knew I had to read it, and be reminded that there is hope, there are answers (some I may not like), and I can choose healing. God is near to the brokenhearted. I like the practical help she includes at the end of the book that any of us can do:
Find What Lifts Your Spirits
Make Sure You Give Your Body What It Needs
Resist The Tendency to Isolate Yourself
Master Your Thoughts or Your Thoughts Will Master You
Play Music, Sing and (if you can) Laugh
Read The Psalms
This is a great book to hold on to and refer to again and again. The are questions in the back of the book that can enhance your personal reading or be used in a group setting.

Author: Kay Arthur
Published: October 2010
Pages: 240
Genre: Christian Living
Source: WaterBrook Multnomah
4 Bears


This complimentary review copy was received thankfully from WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group and in no way influenced my review of this book.  These are my personal thoughts and reactions to the reading of the book.”

The Miracle of Mercy Land

What if you had the power to AMEND CHOICES YOU MADE IN THE PAST? Would you do it even if it CHANGED EVERYTHING?

Mercy Land has made some unexpected choices for a young woman in the 1930s. The sheltered daughter of a traveling preacher, she chooses to leave her rural community to move to nearby Bay City on the warm, gulf-waters of southern Alabama. There she finds a job at the local paper and spends seven years making herself indispensible to old Doc Philips, the publisher and editor. Then she gets a frantic call at dawn—it’s the biggest news story of her life, and she can’t print a word of it.

Doc has come into possession of a curious book that maps the lives of everyone in Bay City—decisions they’ve made in the past, and how those choices affect the future. Mercy and Doc are consumed by the mystery locked between the pages—Doc because he hopes to right a very old wrong, and Mercy because she wants to fulfill the book’s strange purpose. But when a mysterious stranger shows up, Mercy begins to understand she may have to choose between love and loneliness . . . or good and evil . . . for the rest of her life.

I could not put this book down. It has such a sense of suspensful urgency to find out what this book is and what is going to happen. This one of those books that speaks to your heart and mind in ways you can't explain to others, but you know you've been touched. It will get to you think about the choices you've made and have yet to make and the impact they  have on the lives of those around you.  The message, "it's not all about me" beautifully shines through.   A fantastic book club choice.

Read and excerpt here.
Visit the author's website

RIVER JORDAN began her writing career as a playwright with the Loblolly Theatre group. She teaches and speaks nationwide on ‘The Power of Story’, is a monthly contributor to the southern authors’ collective A Good Blog is Hard To Find, and produces and hosts the weekly radio program CLEARSTORY with River Jordan, in Nashville, where she and her husband live. She is the author of Saints in Limbo and this is her fourth novel.

Thank you to KBK Public Relations and WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group for this review copy.

Indivisible

An inseparable bond.
An insatiable force.

Battling his own personal demons, Police Chief Jonah Westfall knows the dark side of life and has committed himself to eradicating it. When a pair of raccoons are found mutilated in Redford, Colorado, Jonah investigates the gruesome act, knowing the strange event could escalate and destroy the tranquility of his small mountain town. With a rising drug threat and never-ending conflict with Tia Manning, a formidable childhood friend with whom he has more than a passing history, Jonah fights for answers—and his fragile sobriety.

But he can’t penetrate every wound or secret—especially one fueled by a love and guilt teetering on madness.

Kristen Heitzmann's book was a page turner even though I had the animal mutilator figured out from the beginning, but the reason why was very interesting and it unfolded slowly.  It is a psychological thriller with a little bit of romance. My daughter loves Kristen's books and has recommended them to me many times.  I will be reading more of her books.

Read the First Chapter Here.

Visit Kristen's website.



This book was provided for review by the WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group

Here Burns My Candle

A mother who cannot face her future.

A daughter who cannot escape her past.

Lady Elisabeth Kerr is a keeper of secrets. A Highlander by birth and a Lowlander by marriage, she honors the auld ways, even as doubts and fears stir deep within her.

Her husband, Lord Donald, has secrets of his own, well hidden from the household, yet whispered among the town gossips.

His mother, the dowager Lady Marjory, hides gold beneath her floor and guilt inside her heart. Though her two abiding passions are maintaining her place in society and coddling her grown sons, Marjory’s many regrets, buried in Greyfriars Churchyard, continue to plague her.

One by one the Kerr family secrets begin to surface, even as bonny Prince Charlie and his rebel army ride into Edinburgh in September 1745, intent on capturing the crown.

A timeless story of love and betrayal, loss and redemption, flickering against the vivid backdrop of eighteenth-century Scotland , Here Burns My Candle illumines the dark side of human nature, even as hope, the brightest of tapers, lights the way home.

I love historical fiction that makes me want to do research for more information.  Liz Curtis Higgs accomplished that with this story.  It takes a few chapters to set up the story and get to know all the characters but it pays off.  You will find yourself getting very involved with the characters and begin to care what happens to them.  There is a glossary at the end that helps with the Scottish vocabulary. 

LIZ CURTIS HIGGS is the author of twenty-seven books with three million copies in print, including: her best-selling historical novels, Thorn in My Heart, Fair Is the Rose, Christy Award-winner Whence Came a Prince, and Grace in Thine Eyes, a Christy Award finalist; My Heart’s in the Lowlands: Ten Days in Bonny Scotland, an armchair travel guide to Galloway; and her contemporary novels, Mixed Signals, a Rita Award finalist, and Bookends, a Christy Award finalist. Visit the author’s extensive website .



This was book was provided for review by WaterBrook Multnomah.

Deep Harbor - Guest Review

SOME TIES CAN NEVER BE BROKEN

As they build new lives in America, Tora, Elsa, Kaatje, and Karl each experience a personal tragedy that threatens to destroy everything they left Norway to find. Tora’s web of lies has cost her a successful future with the man she loves. When tragedy strikes, Elsa must draw upon her faith and the strength she can muster to discover who she is and the path she must follow. After her husband’s disappearance, Kaatje struggles to raise two young daughters and tend her farm, and Karl finds himself caught in a life of loneliness and emptiness. Only by placing their trust in God—and in each other—will they pass through these rough waters and find the safety of the harbor.

From the richly forested banks of the Washington Territory to the burgeoning city of Yokohama and across the turbulent, danger-filled waves of the open sea—experience the epic saga of perseverance, pain, faith, and calling in the Northern Lights series.

"Deep harbor is the second book in a three book series. I have read the entire series and you will definitely want to meet the characters in book one, as it sets the stage for book 2. This is a book of life changing situations and decisions. It is filled with romance, heartache, suspense and the unexpected twists and turns of life, and how to overcome and grow from all these experiences. It will make you laugh, cry and eager to read how it all turns out for the Bergensers in book three.”

Thank you to my daughter, Courtney, for her review of this book.

Fiction lovers don’t need to budget to travel this spring break with Waterbrook Multnomah Publishing Group’s six full-length novels by beloved Christian authors. At the low cost of only $5.99, these well-read “get-aways” provide quality entertainment at a price that any reader can afford.

Thank you to Waterbrook Multnomah Publishing for sending me this review copy.